Zimbabwe didn’t fit in with the schedule of the round the world ticket we got. The airlines the company uses don’t fly to Zim as part of any package so we had to buy the plane tickets in and out of the country separately. The reason for including Zimbabwe into the travel plans is that we have relatives over here and we’ve never visited them. We really wanted to come, especially as we would be sort of in the neighbourhood.

My uncle emigrated to Rhodesia (as was) about 50 years ago and spent most of his life in the education system, founding schools and teaching and was a headmaster for many years. There are now cousins and second cousins and cousins once or twice removed (I don’t understand all that stuff) in various parts of the country.

I have been fascinated to see what life here is like in a country so little reported on in the UK in recent years but one which has gone through war, huge upheaval, economic meltdown with a peak inflation rate of 11.2 million percent at one stage and where a tiny minority of whites (1 white Zimbabwean to every 1,000 black Zimbabwean) coexist in an often brittle relationship.

On our first weekend in Zim we went up North to Lake Kariba.

(My arty shot of the lake)

Just before we headed lakeward I read from Blighty the ludicrous news of the letter which was sent out by the department of health and insanity in the UK to leading supermarkets asking them to move daffodil flowers and daffodil bulbs away from fruit and veg sections in case people mistake them for onions or Chinese edible plants and try to cook them which can have unfortunate side effects such as dying. (It reminds me of an unfortunate mistake I once made in Tesco when their stationery aisle was placed close to the meat section and I cooked a packet of felt tip pens thinking they were sausages.)

I think that if people need to be told not to eat daffodil bulbs they are probably beyond help.

I would shudder to read a list of all the things we have been warned about in the UK that are bad for you, many of which will change every few years or so to contradict what you were told before.

It puts things into a new perspective when you come to a place where there are all sorts of things are a lot more dangerous than daffodil bulbs!

Namely, Lake Kariba – it makes Windermere look a bit puddle-like. It’s the world’s largest man made lake – lies between Zimbabwe and Zambia – it’s over 200 km long and up to 40 km wide in parts. It’s big and it’s beautiful.

And it’s dangerous! Positively packed full of things that want to kill you. Lots of hippos and more crocodiles than you could shake a stick at (while screaming: “Go away!” Loudly).

In England the most dangerous thing you’ll find in a lake is a shopping trolley.

People are regularly “taken” by crocodiles here. The last one (from the small jetty where we got on and off our little boat each day) was just a few weeks ago. The jetty is about 8 foot by 5 foot and a foot above the water. The water was murky brown so you couldn’t see what was lurking beneath and it left us feeling a little bit English – really wanting to get off it as quickly as possible but also having a desperate urge to form a slow moving queue.

We saw locals sitting, fishing, on the very edge of the lake with crocodiles a few metres away from them.

We sailed partway up “crocodile alley” which is a river running into the lake with a shedload of crocodiles and hippos. Think Roger Moore in Live and Let Die in the scene on the little island at the crocodile farm but with hippos added into the mix. We sailed past a group of 14 hippo adults and babies wallowing about but when a few of the adults started submerging and heading our way the anxious vibes we were giving off were picked up by Cap’n Mike and we high tailed it back to wider water.

We spent two seriously hot mornings fishing for bream with a fair amount of success and had a wonderful experience on the second evening when sitting on the front lawn and looked up to see an adult hippo grazing just 20 feet from us.

Traveling back from Kariba we slammed to a halt 20 feet from two elephants, grazing at the side of the road. We took a few photos and were saying lots of lovely things about how magnificent they were and how amazing it was to see them in the wild, just a few feet away, when a couple of cars and a pickup truck roared past at high speed – there were about 8 people in the back of the truck who were yelling at the elephants as they flew by which was crazily irresponsible: it was us who would be left to deal with a couple of distressed and stroppy nellies. Mike figured that reversing away from them would be a very good idea but the numpty in the car behind was frozen to the spot and wouldn’t move. Only option left was to try to get past the elephants before they charged.

I’m not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing that Mike’s truck is a big silver Toyota 4 x 4 which, if it had a trunk and big floppy ears would probably pass muster as a slightly under-height pachyderm, but these two very real elephants looked mighty peeved. I was videoing the scene on my phone, as there seemed nothing else to do other than scream and pray, and I have a great shot of the elephant nearest us stamping and trumpeting and generally being pretty angry and the second one, quieter (it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch, apparently) running at us as we race past and miss it by a metre.

There are definitely bits of Africa that are out to kill us.

You can forgive it a few assassination attempts as it gives such a lot in return. Lake Kariba is just stunning. With majestic fish eagles and herons and kingfishers flying around and elephants, warthog, zebra, hippos and crocodiles all spotted (zebra, striped) on one day. Huge skies – stunning sunsets. It’s easy there to think thankful thoughts of creation and creator.